Chapter Three…We move to Champaign

In 1975 Randy had come back from California on a self-proclaimed 'business trip' when he told my mother he was in love with another woman. He always had issues with philandering, and, asshole that he was, he proceeded to go into graphic detail the things he did with California woman over the past weeks' time. Mother left him and ended up with some weird custody arrangement for my brother and me. I'm sure Randy never got over the fact that he couldn't possess her. He told the judge that Mother would never get a dime from him-and for the most part, she didn't.  

My then 28-year-old father could then gallivant to his heart's content.   

However, his plan backfired- he never held a job for the rest of his life and was usually homeless or squatting. He spent the rest of his life NOT paying child support vowing to 'make things right' in an attempt to regain his now broken family. Before the divorce, Randy was a dynamic, ambitious, gregarious, lover of life. He was in the Master's program at EIU, studying Mass Communication specializing in the commoditization of radio, and he was on staff at Lakeland College in Mattoon. My mother told me that he established the journalism dept there. She's a pathological liar, so who knows if it's actually true. Or anything else she's ever told me for that matter. He was also the overnight DJ of EIUs radio station, WEIC. Before he started his show, WEIC was an easy listening station. His Rock-N-Roll show in the early 1970s started to sell advertising at an astronomical pace. He became instrumental in changing the radio station from easy listening to money-making rock format. He had that effect. If he put his mind to it, everything he touched turned to gold. As mentioned-after the divorce, he quit all jobs and basically became a vagrant. Because of all this, my mother moved to Champaign, Illinois, for a couple reasons. 1. To be away from him and 2. to find a job. At the time, my mother was grooming dogs out of our home. My grandfather bought my mother and my aunt a house; my aunt Anne was coming to EIU, and my mother obviously had two kids. I was attending Mark Twain elementary, and I was in third grade. This is an important fact. My mother asked Randy to watch my brother and me so she could go to Champaign and get a foothold. She had a job at Bishops Buffet waiting for her and a friend, Ross Lopez, was going to let her stay with him until she was able to get an apartment. I don't know if she knew, didn't know, didn't care or what…but Randy was fucking homeless at the time. He had been in and out of a place we pejoratively called Minnie's Roach Ranch. It was a shithole house turned to apartments on 9th street in Charleston. It was just a few blocks from our house on 10th street, down from TJ Miller's house around the corner from Josh and Noah Middleton's house. Minnie’s Roach Ranch was inhabited by students, creepers, weirdos, etc. The main living room was closed off and inhabited by a woman that was close to 900 years old, that slept on the couch all day in a dark, musty, dirty, dank foul room. The house had one phone in the foyer that Minnie would get up and answer when it rang. I can still hear her banshee squawking 'RRRANNNDDHHUUEEEE' when he would get a call. Randy had lived in almost every unit in the house. I distinctly remember at least three of them of the maybe five or so. Like I said, when my mother went to Champaign, she asked Randy to watch us. Of course, he said yes. However, the first night, without a place to stay, we walked around town, we went to Huck's so Philip and I could play the new big thing! Video Games! Hucks had an 8-bit game called Stratovox. So we went and played that for a while then when it got dark-it was a school night-we had to go…..somewhere….so Randy chose the least worst option. Minnie's Roach Ranch. He didn't have an apartment, so he did what ANY reasonable person would do. He kicked in the window to the dirt basement. We did it late so no one would hear it. I was in third grade, and Philip was in pre-school. So the next day we walked me to school, no breakfast, no lunch-that was common when for me when we were with him during 'his time.' He and Philip picked me up, and we repeated the previous day. After the second day, he could no longer convince us that this was some fun adventure…he tried to make it seem as though we were plucky pioneers roughing it and surviving off the land. Faced with the idea of having to be responsible for two children for an unknown length of time, he realized how incapable he was. He approached my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Althea Jones, and told her that he had to go looking for my mother who had disappeared and was possibly in Chicago or Champaign. As mentioned, he was a master manipulator, and he knew not just WHO to approach, but EXACTLY what to say to evoke pity and compassion. It was 1979-1980ish, so OF COURSE, she was going to say yes. DCFS or calling the police wasn't a thing then. SO Philip and I went to stay with Bill and Althea Jones and their two children John and Stephanie. I have no idea how long we were there. A day? A Month? I have profound memories of them and their rabbit, however. AND it was there I began a lifelong love of Doritos! My mother was furious. We ended up going to her new duplex at Maynard Lake over….Christmas break? Spring Break? I don't remember. I DO remember that was scared and lost in this new place..................

I've digressed a little bit, and for that, I apologize. After Randy got us to Champaign, we all went to the grocery store called Jewel. While we were walking through the store, I saw another family. It was odd for me to see something like that.  

(My parents divorced when I was 2? 3? Even though my first memory is riding on my father's back, walking north on Coler ave, over the railroad tracks, seeing my mother in the window at Carle hospital, shortly after delivering my brother, I could not remember ever being a family.) 

Interestingly enough, this time at Jewel was also the first, last, and only time, I remember mother and father together with Lincoln and Philip. Something....happened... at Jewel. I noticed the parents: The man had a receding hairline and the beginnings of a beer belly. The mother was about 5 feet tall, holding an infant. A girl I was pretty sure gauging by all the pink....then BAM. Thunder….struck….. me …….dumb. I thought I was going to vomit. There in my direct line of sight was a little strawberry blonde girl with long hair, a tartan poncho, freckles, and piercing blue eyes.

We made eye contact and became locked in a visual embrace that lasted from the time we first saw each other until the time they walked out of the store. It was Stacy. This was the first time we'd seen each other. What follows in the rest of this story you may not believe, but I assure you-every bit of it is true. A testimony that true love exists even if it's only once in a generation. The crossing of paths that I'm going to tell you about in our respective lives is mind-blowing to the point of terror. The first time I saw her, my pulse skyrocketed, my throat got thick, I couldn't speak, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I was 8 years old. When my parents finished shopping, my mother thought I was sick. Her concern over my lovesickness almost ended me up in the Emergency Room. I told neither one of them the truth. All I wanted to do was go home and cry because I knew I'd never see the girl with long strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and tartan poncho again.